A few days ago I got an e-mail from Uber telling me I had a free meal up to a $30 value simply because I have an account with them. I have to admit that since I have not been flying much, I have not needed their ride-share services. I did recently try a restaurant delivery service and enjoyed it and so I thought I would give Uber Eats a try this evening. The catalyst for doing so is because my wife is helping my oldest daughter drive to Alabama for graduate school and I didn't want to cook anything for myself this evening.
The e-mail made it really easy to get a meal as I just needed to click on it. The link took me to ubereats.com. I just had to log into my Uber account and it had all of my billing information. It even showed an old $5 credit I had from using the ride-share service earlier this year. Then I looked for a type of food I might want for dinner. That can be tougher than it sounds.
This evening I selected Greek food. I had up to a $30 credit and so I made sure to get plenty of extra food so I have a few more meals later in the week. After all, my wife won't be back until late Thursday evening and while I am not a bad cook, I am preoccupied with other activities . . . like watching movies, playing video games, and practicing the guitar. I picked up a gyro for this evening along with a salad for tomorrow. The total came to something like $20. As with all food-delivery services, there are other fees to be aware of and my $30 credit didn't cover any of them. Those added up to $10 and so I had to come up with a small sum of money. I knew I would and so that didn't surprise me.
I placed my order and did not feel like it needed to be rushed to my house. Selecting the take-your-time option took $1 off the delivery fee and my estimate is that it slowed down the order by a maximum of only 5 to 10 minutes. It still arrived 20 minutes before the expected delivery time. Then I watched the map with the status of my order. I finished up a few projects from work and just kept the map in the background on my 3rd monitor, glancing at it every few moments.
Eventually a car appeared on the map and it surprised me that the car headed away from my house. I couldn't figure out why until I realized the Uber driver was headed to the restaurant to pick up the order. Then he headed towards my house. He took a much different route than I would have taken but I learned something new, he got there faster than I would have. I will have to remember that route the next time I am in that part of town.
My meal arrived earlier than promised and that is always nice. Furthermore it was still warm. I ate the gyro and put the rest of the food in the refrigerator. Now I just need to hope my youngest daughter doesn't investigate it when she comes home from work.
I still prefer to go out to restaurants as opposed to take-out food. However during these times of COVID-19, I would rank my experience with Uber Eats very similar to that of Doordash. I think they are about equal in price and service. If you get a coupon in your e-mail, I highly suggest using it.
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